Daily MailOz Clarke's forthcoming BBC series - Oz and James' Big Wine Adventure - is thrown into the spotlight by JILL PARKIN as she takes a look behind the scenes of the televised French road/wine trip. She finds that Oz remains a true expert on all things vinous -when it comes to wine, he can talk you beautifully into anything' - although Top Gear's James May reveals that his car knowledge is somewhat lacking: He's quite good at talking about them in a lyrical way but he thinks they've still got carburettors.' The series will be aired on BBC2 in November. MATTHEW JUKES recommends some inexpensive French reds, including 2004 Chteau Roubaud, Tradition Costires de Nmes, France (6.99; Yapp Brothers).

Welcome to South Africa, a place of great natural beauty, still teeming with unique and exciting wildlife in places, and home to the Cape Floral Kingdom, the smallest and richest of the earth's six great floral kingdoms.

There's a wintry chill in the air in the Cape, and winemakers are taking a well-earned break, hoping to reap the rewards of their hard work during previous vintages at the many competitions underway, both locally and abroad.

I've just about finished reading the new wine books that filled my Christmas stocking, but once again it was a funny little book already in my possession, first published in 1954, that afforded me the most amusement over the holidays.In his foreword to this, the third (1966) edition of C de Bosdari's Wines of the Cape, PO Sauer describes it as the first book on South African wines which will help our wine-drinkers to understand what they are drinking, how it is made and why it is good'. (It is also good for us, claims the author: Wine-drinkers, as a rule, are very healthy people, the sort of people who shamelessly turn up to bury their teetotal friends')